On July 15, 1983, Nintendo sold its first Famicom. Gaming hasn't been the same since.

We're right on the cusp of another generation of game consoles, and whether you're an Xbox One fanperson or a PlayStation 4 zealot you probably know what's coming if you've been through a few of these cycles. The systems will launch in time for the holidays, each will have one or two decent launch titles, there will be perhaps a year or two when the new console and the old console coexist on store shelves, and then the "next generation" becomes the current generation—until we do it all again a few years from now. For gamers born in or after the 1980s, this cycle has remained familiar even as old console makers have bowed out (Sega, Atari) and new ones have taken their place (Sony, Microsoft).

It wasn't always this way.

The system that began this cycle, resuscitating the American video game industry and setting up the third-party game publisher system as we know it, was the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), launched in Japan on July 15, 1983 as the Family Computer (or Famicom). Today, in celebration of the original Famicom's 30th birthday, we'll be taking a look back at what the console accomplished, how it worked, and how people are (through means both legal and illegal) keeping its games alive today.

From Japanese beginnings to American triumphs

The Famicom wasn't Nintendo's first home console—that honor goes to the Japan-only "Color TV Game" consoles, which were inexpensive units designed to play a few different variations of a single, built-in game. It was, however, Nintendo's first console to use interchangeable game cartridges.

The original Japanese Famicom looked like some sort of hovercar with controllers stuck to it. The top-loading system used a 60-pin connector to accept its 3-inch high, 5.3-inch wide cartridges and originally had two hardwired controllers that could be stored in cradles on the side of the device (unlike the NES' removable controllers, these were permanently wired to the Famicom).

The second controller had an integrated microphone in place of its start and select buttons. A 15-pin port meant for hardware add-ons was integrated into the front of the system—we'll talk more about the accessories that used this port in a bit. After an initial hardware recall related to a faulty circuit on the motherboard, the console became quite successful in Japan based on the strength of arcade ports like Donkey Kong Jr. and original titles like Super Mario Bros.

Enlarge/ An early prototype of what would become the North American version of the Famicom. The Nintendo Advanced Video System communicated with its peripherals wirelessly through infrared.

The North American version of the console was beset by several false starts, to say nothing of unfavorable marketing conditions. A distribution agreement with then-giant Atari fell through at the last minute after Atari executives saw a version of Nintendo's Donkey Kong running on Coleco's Adam computer at the 1983 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). By the time Atari was ready to negotiate again, the 1983 video game crash had crippled the American market, killing what would have been the "Nintendo Enhanced Video System" before it had a chance to live.

Nintendo decided to go its own way. By the time 1985's CES rolled around, the company was ready to show a prototype of what had become the Nintendo Advanced Video System (AVS). This system was impressive in its ambition and came with accessories including controllers, a light gun, and a cassette drive that were all meant to interface with the console wirelessly, via infrared. The still-terrible market for video games made such a complex (and, likely, expensive) system a tough sell, though, and after a lukewarm reception, Nintendo went back to the drawing board to work on what would become the Nintendo Entertainment System we still know and love today.

Enlarge/ By late 1985, Nintendo had settled on the console design that most American readers will be the most familiar with.

What Nintendo went to market with in October 1985 wasn't just a console redesigned for a new territory, but a comprehensive re-branding strategy meant to convince Westerners that the NES wasn't like those old video game consoles that had burned them a few years before. This new Famicom was billed as an "entertainment system" that required you to insert "game paks" into a "control deck," not some pedestrian video game console that took cartridges. The console's hardware followed suit—it was still marketed to kids, but the grey boxy Nintendo Entertainment System looked much more mature than the bright, toy-like Famicom. At the same time, accessories like R.O.B. the robot assured parents that this wasn't just for "video games"—still dirty words to many consumers.

Note the drastic differences between American and Japanese game cartridges. The disk card pictured here was intended for use with the Japan-only Famicom Disk System.

Each of the titles in the relatively strong 18-game launch lineup (remember, at this point the system had been humming along for more than two years in Japan) also featured box art that accurately depicted the graphics of the game inside, unlike the disappointing exaggerations of the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man or the infamous E.T.

The final building block in the NES rebuild of the North American game industry was the way Nintendo handled third-party developers. In the Atari era, everyone from Sears to Quaker Oats tried to grab a slice of the gaming pie. The fact that basically anyone could design and sell hastily-coded Atari 2600 games with no interference from or cooperation with Atari led to a game market flooded with shovelware and to clearance bins filled with unsellable dreck. This in turn led to gun-shy retailers and consumers.

Nintendo clamped down on this hard. Third parties had to be licensed to develop games for Nintendo's system, and Nintendo's licensing terms both prohibited developers from releasing games for other consoles and confined them to releasing just two games a year. Other restrictions, mostly aimed at weeding out religious and other "inappropriate" content, were also imposed—memorably, these restrictions resulted in the Super Nintendo port of Mortal Kombat where all the kombatants combatants ooze "sweat" instead of blood. Developers agreed to the restrictions in order to get access to a base of NES fans rabid for new software. (Many of Nintendo's restrictions weren't relaxed until the early '90s when it was losing developers to its first credible competition, the Sega Genesis.)

Licensed games received both a printed Seal of Quality on their boxes and access to the proprietary 10NES lockout hardware, a chip on the cartridge's circuit board that checked in with a corresponding chip on the console's. While not foolproof, in the early days of the NES the 10NES hardware helped to combat the flood of low-quality software that had killed off Atari and its ilk.

Not all developers were happy with these terms, but fighting Nintendo was an uphill battle. The most significant challenge to the 10NES system came from Tengen, a subsidiary of Atari Games. Rather than try to circumvent 10NES, Tengen used Nintendo's copyright documents to reverse-engineer the chip and create its own compatible version, codenamed "Rabbit." Nintendo sued for patent infringement and, at least in part because Tengen didn't use a clean room design in Rabbit, the judge ruled in Nintendo's favor.

Enlarge/ The 10NES chip would prevent the system from booting if its security check failed. It was important in the early days, but NESes with dirty or worn connectors are prone to failing its check—this led to the dreaded grey blinking screen that I've probably spent hours of my life looking at. The redesigned top-loading NES shipped without a 10NES chip, and some people who repair older NES consoles recommend snapping off the fourth pin of the chip to disable the check entirely, as shown here.

Salvaged Circuitry

And the rest is really history. The NES was the undisputed leader in the US for several years and wasn't seriously challenged until Sega's Genesis kicked off the 16-bit era. In some territories like Europe and South America, the 8-bit Sega Master System had gained a stronger foothold, but it was a relative rarity in the US. A new top-loading version of the NES and the Famicom with a redesigned controller was launched in both America and Japan in 1993 after the introduction of the Super Nintendo, but by then the stream of high-profile software had slowed to a trickle. The system was produced until 1995 in the US but lived to see its 20th birthday in Japan before being discontinued in 2003.

yeah really. we didn't have to worry about licensing issues either when lending/trading games....

favorite was mario 3 and tetris, and of course willow lol.

anecdote: I bought a nintendo 64 + 15 games for $30 over the weekend and was playing mario kart with my 5 year old. he asks me "dad, why do you have to blow into that thing?"(thing meaning the cartridge) and I had to pause myself for a minute and laugh about that.

edit: I still remember at one point I had to have a screw driver inserted along with the cartridge for my NES to hold the cartridge in place for it to work. hahahaha

The NES also should take credit for standardizing console controller layout as we know it. Before the NES, console controller design varied wildly with joysticks, disks, keypads, etc. The NES with a d-pad on the left for character movement and buttons on the right for actions, became the standard layout for console controllers up to this day. Future consoles added buttons and analog sticks, but with a few exceptions (the CD-i) and third party experimentation, the basic NES controller layout is still in the DNA of each future generation's controller. I could argue that the motion controls like the Kinnect are the first real advance in controller design since 1983.

Great article. It was 25 years ago this month that my mom took me to KB Toys and purchased the NES Action Set. The car ride home seemed to take forever but I managed to survive by pouring over every word on the system's box.

'The 10NES chip would prevent the system from booting if its security check failed. It was important in the early days, but NESes with dirty or worn connectors are prone to failing its check—this led to the dreaded grey blinking screen that I've probably spent hours of my life looking at.'

Wow. DRM has been messing with my gaming experience for far longer than I thought.

yeah really. we didn't have to worry about licensing issues either when lending/trading games....

favorite was mario 3 and tetris, and of course willow lol.

anecdote: I bought a nintendo 64 + 15 games for $30 over the weekend and was playing mario kart with my 5 year old. he asks me "dad, why do you have to blow into that thing?"(thing meaning the cartridge) and I had to pause myself for a minute and laugh about that.

edit: I still remember at one point I had to have a screw driver inserted along with the cartridge for my NES to hold the cartridge in place for it to work. hahahaha

Cooler anecdote: A guy who worked with my mother at the local newspaper was having a moving sale. For 20 bucks (and another five to get the old coax new new style converter) I got a 2600 with Frogger and Pitfall, plus a bunch of other games. I need to pick it up when I go home next.

The whole sprite limitation part of it reminded me of the recent conversion of Retro City Rampage to NES. The creator made an incredibly in-depth video of how he went about circumventing all of the limitations: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvx4xXhZMrU

I still have my NES system. Original box and everything. I am 57 years old and have collected several old game consoles and computers. These kind of articles make me feel young. The reason being is I can still get the same thrill out of shooting that duck that I had many years ago. My grandkids have all the latest gaming hardware but they like shooting the duck too. They love the Commodore 64 games I have also. This stuff will never go out of style.

'The 10NES chip would prevent the system from booting if its security check failed. It was important in the early days, but NESes with dirty or worn connectors are prone to failing its check—this led to the dreaded grey blinking screen that I've probably spent hours of my life looking at.'Wow. DRM has been messing with my gaming experience for far longer than I thought.

Yeah, half ass copyright protection ends up biting legitimate owners sooner or later. There was nothing to do but buy a new cartridge when that happened. Sucked big time.

'The 10NES chip would prevent the system from booting if its security check failed. It was important in the early days, but NESes with dirty or worn connectors are prone to failing its check—this led to the dreaded grey blinking screen that I've probably spent hours of my life looking at.'

Wow. DRM has been messing with my gaming experience for far longer than I thought.

This was also just after one of the worst things to happen to the video game industry, though. It wasn't so much as protecting revenue streams as it is today as it was more about protecting their reputation and ensuring quality was high, IMHO. People didn't get pissed off like they do today because you could resell the games or loan them to a friend without worry, which is what DRM today is trying to eliminate.

'The 10NES chip would prevent the system from booting if its security check failed. It was important in the early days, but NESes with dirty or worn connectors are prone to failing its check—this led to the dreaded grey blinking screen that I've probably spent hours of my life looking at.'Wow. DRM has been messing with my gaming experience for far longer than I thought.

Yeah, half ass copyright protection ends up biting legitimate owners sooner or later. There was nothing to do but buy a new cartridge when that happened. Sucked big time.

Except most of the time it wasn't the cartridge but the 72-pin connector that was to blame. Fortunately, as the article points out you can pretty easily disable the lockout chip altogether (although back then it was pretty hard to find this information).

I never understood why anyone would purchase the NES over a Commodore 64. Noone did in Denmark either infact, thus a large programming scene developed.edit:Maybe the NES was vastly cheaper?

Whats not to understand.It had a better library while the Commodore 64 was chop full of shovelware and really really bad ports.I had both consoles as a kid and let me tell you once I got the NES I never touched the Commodore 64 again.No one did and thus a large gaming scene developed.

Maybe the gaming scene shifted to two paths- NES and C64.I never had unfixable problems with my C64 and upgraded to the C128 when it came out. The friend shared shovelware was the advantage. I had a library of 100+ games that cost maybe $50. I have always felt console gamers just worked with what the manufacturers gave you and C64s allowed the consumers the gaming experience that they wanted to create.

Wow. DRM has been messing with my gaming experience for far longer than I thought.

Quote:

This was also just after one of the worst things to happen to the video game industry, though. It wasn't so much as protecting revenue streams as it is today as it was more about protecting their reputation and ensuring quality was high, IMHO.

English is the language of business. Until Chinese becomes the language of business.

English is extremely easy vs chinese, ergo I doubt it will go away even if China regains its position in history as a super power like it's been for the last centuries. Wheter we were aware of that or not, China's always been a very powerful country long before U.S. or many others, but English has come to stay.

OK, so I can appreciate that the music in the second version is acoustically superior. However, it just sounds wrong to my ears! I guess that can happen when you've listened to one for something like 3k hours... I can even hear Link's sword shooting off over top of the music in my head.

OK, so I can appreciate that the music in the second version is acoustically superior. However, it just sounds wrong to my ears! I guess that can happen when you've listened to one for something like 3k hours... I can even hear Link's sword shooting off over top of the music in my head.